


Where Whispers Made Us Bleed

by scribblemyname



Series: In Wild Places [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Brothers, Character Study, Fantasy AU, Gen, dystopian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-20 00:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2408993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint knows how to fight the Strangeness and Hawkeye has taken the lives of beloved and stranger alike, but holy water cannot kill a human soul, and he refuses to owe his brother this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Whispers Made Us Bleed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [r_lee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/r_lee/gifts), [inkvoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkvoices/gifts).



> Written for in_the_blue's October writing challenge.
> 
> Events occur before Clint meets Natasha in this series.

They don't just let you work for SHIELD, not walkers like Hawkeye as he blows through the dusty wilderness of a world gone mad with the Great Strangeness. There are evaluations to be made and work to be done, blood tests to draw and scores to beat.  
  
Hawkeye has been little more than whispered legend and a trail of arrow-strewn bodies in his wake, long enough that SHIELD agents crowd into the range to see him shoot. They see an unshowered, too young ex-carnie with little about his looks to commend him. He is purpose condensed into a hard frame and sharp eyes, neither tall nor handsome nor so well-built that anyone can see it under the grime of hard living. SHIELD only takes the best and they look at him and don't see it. Disappointment sighs into the space around him.  
  
It swirls into the air near him and bumps into the hand of a soul they cannot see. Dark whispers behind him, "What do they know?"  
  
He knows what the soul wants him to answer. Nothing. They know nothing.  
  
He does not answer. He nocks an arrow, draws his bow, and aims. Target after moving target, bullseye after body-shaped paper, he shoots and he does not miss.

* * *

"…no family," Doctor Avram continues her list of all the lacks in Clint Barton's life.  
  
His head snaps up at those words. "I have family," he says, tone sharp, but he stops there. Stillness fills the air with tension in the room.  
  
The psych evaluator runs through her paperwork, frown furrowing between her eyebrows. "Your parents died in a car accid—"  
  
Clint shrugs and something in the motion silences her.  
  
She waits him out until he's finally willing to say it.  
  
"I have a brother."

* * *

"Please, kill me. You owe me this." Barney's soul reflects in the mirror behind him.  
  
Clint washes his face then unstops the sink to let the water run out. He stares at the reflection and whispers back, "I don't."

* * *

_You owe me this._ It is the refrain of their childhood, of the awkward growing up years in the orphanage then the carnival before the dangerous years of their youth when they guarded the carnival's caravans on the roads between the cities.  
  
 _You owe me this._ The night stars overhead as Clint dragged Barney from his thin mattress on a rickety bed in their trailer. The time spent being brothers, practicing arrows and knives together because they were family and that is what family did.  
  
 _You owe me this._ The tedious hours as Barney forced Clint to sit down and study his basic school subjects though they were of little use at the carnival, as he forced Clint to learn sign language to make up for all the words Clint couldn't hear.  
  
 _You owe me this_ for the times I sat with you after our father left bruises all over your arms and body, for the times I fought the bullies off your back.  
  
 _You owe me this_ for the times I fed you soup when you were sick, for covering your body with mine when someone's fist decided you were in the way.  
  
There is nothing gentle in the refrain, but then there is nothing gentle in either of them.

* * *

"Liar," Melinda calls him on that with a soft smile when his shrug proves he is not offended. "You're too gentle," she says.  
  
She knows about the strays he takes in and cares for before placing them with good homes. She knows about the young kids he'll take aside and train to take care of themselves and the neighbors and homeless folks he protects without thinking about it.  
  
But Clint shrugs because Hawkeye is not gentle and that's who he mostly is.

* * *

Hawkeye never stops to catalog what changes the Great Strangeness may have caused in him. He can see his brother's soul, even though Barney's body died with the rest of the carnival that raised them. Clint had been standing beside his brother when the tides hit. He should have been changed or killed as well, but he'd been tasting the holy water.  
  
Even now, Clint knows how to fight the Strangeness and Hawkeye has taken the lives of beloved and stranger alike, but holy water cannot kill a human soul, and he refuses to owe his brother this.

* * *

The pleading goes on; the whispers torment. Clint hears his brother every time he shoots an arrow, and the memories of all the faces from that day haunt his work and the blood on his hands.  
  
"You owe me this," Barney demands. For all the times I carried your pain, for all the times I forced you to work through it, for all the times I saved you. _You owe me this._  
  
Clint had put an arrow in all the others the Great Strangeness changed, the wolves and fae and griffins and beasts it had turned their carnival family into. He had saved his life and stopped theirs before they became only monsters.  
  
Barney is not a monster.

* * *

"What is it like out there in the wild places…alone?" Melinda asks.  
  
It is this last word that unravels the puzzle of her question. She has walked among the wild places as often as Clint or any other agent of SHIELD. She's one of the best. But she's not a walker.  
  
Clint works the idea through his head, remembering the feel of the strange tides, the taste of holy water on his tongue that held his humanity in his flesh, and the sharp edge of perpetual danger under his skin. It feels just like putting arrow after arrow into targets until his fingers bleed. It feels like sneaking into the kitchen for food with Barney with their father passed out drunk on the living room couch. It feels like car crashes and orphanages and running away to a carnival making survival and livelihoods out of the dust of the earth and holy water on silver knives.  
  
Finally, the answer comes to him out of a refrain of their lives, the sigh of the wind over the roof they're sitting on, perhaps the breath of the soul behind him.  
  
"It's necessity," he says.  
  
 _You owe me this._

* * *

Barney is made up of hunger and Clint is made up of necessity, but Hawkeye and Trickshot are both. They brand each other with little pieces of their own armor until sometimes Clint doesn't know where the necessity ends and the hunger begins.

* * *

Holy water will not harm a human soul. Iron will.

* * *

It's done and he's shaking as he leans against the mirror, hands gripping the sink hard enough for his finger joints to hurt. His teeth clench and he ignores the phone ringing on the bed for ten long breaths, counting them up like he and Barney used to do in a dark hiding place while they waited for their father to stumble from the front door into his room.  
  
He waits for the pain inside his chest to stumble into the abyss of dark and bloody memories he harbors.  
  
The phone stops ringing, pauses, then starts up again.  
  
Clint pries his fingers off the sink and crosses the room to his bed. "Hawkeye," he answers sharply.  
  
It's Coulson, a mission, a job—something Hawkeye knows how to handle. He promises to arrive promptly for briefing, hangs up, and collects his bow.  
  
There is no whisper behind his ear.


End file.
